AURORA’s got it all wrong: Smart Meters Radiation Exposure Up to 160 Times More Than Cell Phones (Hirsch)

Recently in Tasmania, where consumers have the right to opt out of having a active smart meter installed on their home, an AURORA Energy spokesperson on the phone has been advising customers that there is no need to worry as the emissions from an active smart meter are the same one would get from a mobile phone or TV screen. As one concerned customer said in reply, “my electricity meter is close to my bedhead but I don’t sleep with a mobile phone or TV”.

It is likely that the AURORA spokesperson was referring to the Tell Associates CCST report. The following from Daniel Hirsch exposes the report as another bit of industry bias, which power companies all too readily lap up as ‘media management’ in order to deceive and “comfort the community”  – and dismiss all evidence to the contrary – in other words SPIN.

From the California Center for Electrosmog Prevention

Daniel Hirsch, California radiation expert and UCSD instructor, criticizes the industry-influenced CCST report that incorrectly minimized smart meter risks, based on the widely distributed  industry-generated Tell Associates report. CCST is a partner with US DOE (US Dept. of Energy), funder and promoter of smart meters. In the following analysis, Hirsch informs us that one smart meter can provide up to the full body radiation exposure of 160 cell phones; in an interview (video), Hirsch provides the average exposure, equivalent to the full body exposure from 100 cell phones. This completely debunks the Tell Associates report, which was paid for by Pacific Gas & Electric.

Abstract
The draft report by the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) does not appear to answer the questions asked of it by the requesting elected officials. Furthermore, rather than being an independent, science-based study, the CCST largely cuts and pastes estimates from a brochure by the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry group, issued some weeks earlier. The EPRI estimates appear incorrect in a number of regards. When two of the most central errors are corrected – the failure to take into account duty cycles of cell phones and microwave ovens and the failure to utilize the same units (they should compare everything in terms of average whole body exposure) the cumulative whole body exposure from a Smart Meter at 3 feet appears to be approximately two orders of magnitude higher than that of a cell phone, rather than two orders of magnitude lower. (Hirsch, California radiation expert, radiation policy instructor at UCSC)

Read the full report here